Thursday, September 2, 2010

Quantifying the Enthusiasm Gap

We hear about the enthusiasm gap all the time, usually in pretty abstract terms. Here it is in black and white: in 10 key races for Senate and Governor in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Florida, North Carolina, and Missouri it's costing Democratic candidates (or Charlie Crist) an average of 7 points on the margin.

If the folks planning to turn out this year matched the 2008 electorate:

-Alex Sink running for Governor in Florida and Alexi Giannoulias running for the Senate in Illinois would have double digit leads.

-Elaine Marshall running for Senate in North Carolina and Pat Quinn running for Governor in Illinois would have small leads instead of trailing.

-Ted Strickland running for Governor in Ohio, Lee Fisher running for Senate in Ohio, Joe Sestak running for Senate in Pennsylvania, and Robin Carnahan running for Senate in Missouri would all be within three points rather than trailing by 7-10 as they do now.

This year isn't getting away from the Democrats because voters are moving toward the Republicans en masse. But the enthusiasm gap is turning races that would otherwise be lean Democratic into toss ups, turning toss ups into leaning Republican, and turning leaning Republican into solid Republican.

21 comments:

Anonymous
said...

You keep on harping on the "Nobody turned against Dem, only enthusiasm". It is probably not true! A Dem voter that stays home, means that he doesn't support Dems! Might not love to vote for GOP, but doesn't want to vote Dem.

Well, 2008 was a high water mark for Dems; there would have been less enthusiasm regardless, but not this bad. Obama has dropped the ball in a big way and the press is no longer propping him up. Now they are kind of piling on, actually - I think they are helping depress turnout. Good. McCain would have been a much better president, but I'm happy to see Obama get taken down by the same group that propped him up.

Based on just these numbers, does that mean if a re-match were held today between Obama and McCain, the final margin would be down to 12 EVs (due to loss of OH, NC, FL, PA)? Did I misunderstand the presidential state margins in that table? I know it's hypothetical...

"You keep on harping on the "Nobody turned against Dem, only enthusiasm". It is probably not true! A Dem voter that stays home, means that he doesn't support Dems! Might not love to vote for GOP, but doesn't want to vote Dem."

Not necessarily. There are infrequent Dem voters who often don't turn out for midterms anyway (Republicans usually have an advantage, as they're an older, whiter constituency). There are Dems who came out for the first time in 2008 and are either fine with Obama and the Democrats or not real inspired to come out again without Obama on the ballot. There are Dems who are down on the party's chances and not inspired to vote because of the economy or because of the lack of change they're seeing (though it may not mean they don't like Obama or the Democrats--they're just not satisfied with the pace of change they voted for 2 years ago).

Isn't there also the phenomenon that people mis-remember who they voted for? eg, someone who actually voted for Obama but doesn't like what he's done believes that they voted against him? How much does this effect change the numbers, usually?

The "enthusiasm gap" can be explained, but not excused. It simply means the government is doing its job (remember all things are relative--we wish they would do more, but compared to the government we had from 2001-2009, it is a "return to normalcy").

Maybe it's time to revisit Nixon's "silent majority"? In any case, somebody needs to trumpet that the current mob-rule Tea Party is actually more ironic than patriotic; their actions are exactly what the Founders feared most (and why we are a republican, federalist government, not a democracy).

Just keep telling yourself that those staying home are fine with Obama (independents and college-educated voters have been moving away from Obama for months, even among all adults or registered voters)... or that anyone could possibly believe that we have had any lack of change. Democrats have not failed to impose their radical, dangerous, and unpopular agenda. They are losing public support because their idiotic schemes have backfired. They are losing public support because their policies have been all wrong -- and so have their politics. Obama is losing support because he has arrogantly waged a jihad against the American people. It's no surprise that Americans have rejected such a rabidly anti-American president.

On average 93% of Presidential voters vote in congressional elections that year. On average 77% of those people vote in the mid-term. So, on average there will be 28% less votes than people who voted for Obama and McCain voting for in House elections. If a party does very well they'll get about 83-85% of their votes in the Presidential year. If they do poorly, they'll get 64-68%.

In 2006 congressional Republicans got 58% of the Bush 2004 vote total. Congressional Democrats got 71% of the Kerry vote total. A lot of people won't vote in these elections. It's just a question of whose voters show up more.

It's too reductive to assume that attitudes toward parties nationally are the overriding factors in how people say they are leaning in Senatorial races. Statewide and personal dynamics, as well as the individual campaign strategies, may turn out to be so important as to largely obscure the influence of national partisan issues. For example, in PA Toomey has had ads up for weeks hammering Sestak. The ads are pretty weak tea, but still, it's been in this period that Toomey has opened up a big lead. Sestak has just now begun to put up his own ads attacking Toomey. Could be that there'll be a big shift back toward Sestak as a result. That's what happened in the primary. Sestak waited until fairly late before going up with ads attacking Specter. Immediately he began to close fast and quickly eliminated Specter's sizeable lead. That's partly because Sestak is not well known around the state. Neither is Toomey. So the race is much more of a toss up than it looks now. Toomey is highly subject to attacks because of his many nutty pronouncements in the past and his advocacy for non-regulation and non-taxation of corporations. Sestak is using those (still poorly known) pronouncements against Toomey, just as he earlier used Specter's words effectively to defeat the incumbent. So Toomey is only on the verge of getting defined in the minds of PA voters. For me it's hard to see him winning if Sestak pursues this strategy of portraying Toomey as a corporate shill...no matter how unenthusiastic voters are about Democrats in general.

In 2008 a Republican and a Democrat were walking together when they spied a lamp on the ground. Since they saw the lamp at the same time, they decided to share the lamp’s power. They rubbed the lamp and a genie rose from the lamp and proclaimed that because they had freed the genie from the lamp, each would receive one wish.

The Democrat said, “I wish that my favorite Senator, Barack Obama will win the nomination and become President of the United States.”

“Your wish has been granted,” said the Genie. “It will be so.”

The Republican, knowing that the wish had already been granted said, “I wish that the new President would delay making every important decision until the majority of Americans have decided. And then the new President should decide to do the opposite.”

"For nearly a century now, the rules have said that tough economic times make big government more popular. For more than 40 years it has been a rule that environmental disasters — and scares over alleged ones — help environmentalists push tighter regulations. According to the rules, Americans never want to let go of an entitlement once they have it. According to the rules, populism is a force for getting the government to do more, not less. According to the rules, Americans don’t care about the deficit during a recession.

And yet none of these rules seem to be applying; at least not too strongly. Big government seems more unpopular today than ever. The Gulf oil spill should be a Gaia-send for environmentalists, and yet three-quarters of the American people oppose Obama’s drilling ban. Sixty percent of likely voters want their newly minted right to health care repealed. Unlike Europe, where protesters take to the streets to save their cushy perks and protect a large welfare state, the tea-party protesters have been taking to the streets to trim back government."

Obama and the Democrats are willfully governing against the wishes of the American people. It is factually correct and self-evident to expose Obama as an ANTI-AMERICAN president, who is waging an assault on the American people and the very ideals upon which America was founded. To pretend otherwise is to be willfully blind to (and complicit in) the willful destruction of our nation.

This brings up an interesting point. Voters aren't crossing parties in high numbers; Republicans are indicating an intent to show up and Democrats aren't. As a result of 'Obama dropoff' voters, Republicans are coming out better than they otherwise would.

This implies, therefore, that the voters Democrats most need to energize are the very ones filtered out by a likely voter screen! The 'likely voters' already on the map aren't showing much sign of changing their votes and Republicans are already energized, so Obama actually could be the most effective campaigner the Democrats have. If already-likely Republicans declare they're less likely to support someone Obama supports, but otherwise-not-voting Democrats come out because of him, it's a net win for Democrats.

Regardless of whether you think Obama has been getting us out of our economic hole quickly enough, it is clear that the 'center right' policies of Bush created that hole. You'd have to have a short term memory defect now to know this.

Obama has made very little use of big government to help people and is now reaping the consequences.

Christian Liberty has borne false witness against Obama by calling Obama's actions 'schemes' but not naming any actual thing which has been done which he objects to. He's just parroting the words h has been taught.

it is abundantly clear that the LEFTIST policies of the Democrats created the hole and that Obama's policies have made the economy WORSE and that ONLY Republicans (and Blue Dogs) could correct the problems that Democrats have created. You have to be willfully blind to deny that Democrats have caused the problems. From higher taxes to burdensome regulations and corrupt regulators, Democrats have been the problem for the past century and Republicans have always had superior policies.

It is false to blame the Republicans the problems that DEMOCRATS have created.

Democrats created Fannie and Freddie and FHA and refused to reform these corrupt bureaucracies when Republicans pointed out that changes were needed. It is little exaggeration to say that Democrats are 100% to blame... and that 100% of the solution will come from Republicans (or from the right).

It is Democrats who have destroyed the economy and tyrannized investors, employers, and consumers.... It is Democrats who have sabotaged any chance of recovery. It is entirely appropriate that Democrats be exposed for their destruction of the economy and punished at the ballot for their sabotage of America.

"Democrats, as the president’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel explained in 2008, have sought to use the ongoing economic crisis to achieve all kinds of unrelated goals: health care policy they have craved for decades, environmental policy that has little to do with the economy, more protections for unions, a greater role for government in the financial and automotive sectors, and on and on. In the process, they have made the actual economic crisis worse by making it difficult for consumers, producers, employers, and investors to plan ahead.

Such unpredictability has always made for terrible public policy. As James Madison put it in Federalist 62, “What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not but that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed? What farmer or manufacturer will lay himself out for the encouragement given to any particular cultivation or establishment, when he can have no assurance that his preparatory labors and advances will not render him a victim to an inconstant government?” The sheer inconstancy of public policy these past two years, as well as its hostility to economic freedom, have contributed mightily to our economic troubles, and left consumers sitting on cash they are wary of spending and investors keeping their powder dry."